Angry Northeast Ohioans boycotting BP gas stations

Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer)Family-owned Tayeh Valero gas station, at E. 79th St. and Chester Ave., has seen gas sales spike 35 percent after the BP oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. Owner Assad Tayeh says customers regularly tell him how angry they are about BP's inability to stop the thousands of gallons of oil being pumped into the Gulf.

But the problem is that boycotting BP doesn't directly hurt the oil giant because it does not own any of the 580 BP stations in Ohio. It has sold them to local franchise owners and regional wholesale suppliers.

"We employ 750 people, and we want to grow," said Gregg Budoi, president and CEO of EZ Energy USA in Cleveland, which owns 78 BP stations in Ohio, including 41 in Greater Cleveland.

He hasn't seen any mass boycotts, but said he is worried. "The more people see oil on the Gulf Coast and birds and fish being affected, the more this will grow," he said.

Bill Englefield, president of Englefield Oil in Newark, which owns 137 filling stations around Columbus and up into Akron, said "we are independent of BP."

"We are kind of hung out there as the scapegoat," he said. We sure don't want to be labeled with them, but unfortunately we've got the sign up there."

Terry Fleming, executive director of the Ohio Petroleum Council, a trade group representing oil companies, said even if drivers boycott, BP could just sell to other gas stations or other oil companies.

Sixty percent of the gasoline sold in Ohio is made either by Marathon or BP, he said.

"If the idea is to punish BP, they are going at it the wrong way," Fleming said. "Who's it really going to punish? Local businesses."

"The environmental impact and cost impact on this infuriates me. We continue to use oil and gas and are so slow to look for replenishable resources: solar, wind, better hybrid technology. The oil companies don't really care," said Susan Kaminski in an email.

All the griping has helped boost gas sales at Tayeh Valero and other non-BP stations.

"Ever since that happened, I've had an increase about 35 percent," said Assad Tayeh, who owns the station with his wife, Hiam. He says customers regularly complain about how angry they are with how BP is handling the disaster in the Gulf.

Chicago-based BP spokesman Scott Dean said the company is aware of the boycott efforts.

"We certainly respect customers' anger. We have seen protests at some sites. We apologize to customers," he said.

"We certainly understand and share people's frustration with this terrible incident in the Gulf. Nobody wants to shut this down and clean this mess up faster than BP does."

After the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground in Alaska in 1989, spilling 11 million gallons of oil, consumers launched a one-day national boycott of Exxon gas and mailed back 10,000 Exxon credit cards to the company.

But Exxon said at the time that the protests had no impact on its gasoline sales.

Dean said BP wants to make things right. "We are doing everything we can to compensate local fishermen and local businessmen on the Gulf Coast whose lives have been affected by this terrible incident," he said. "We are hoping our customers will judge us by how we do respond and how we do clean up and they'll factor that in to their future decisions on fuel purchases."

But not everyone wants to wait that long. Nick Wells of Parma, who avoids BP gas in favor of Speedway, Valero and Sunoco, said: "This needs to get taken care of. It's ridiculous.

"With everything that's going on, I'm just wondering if we're going to end up paying for this cleanup at the pump," he added.

John Barkan of Mentor said via e-mail that "I do not frequent BP unless absolutely necessary and will continue, and maybe avoid them altogether."

Calls to boycott BP have also spilled over into Facebook, where people have created more than 308 sites named "Boycott BP."

The biggest one has more than 184,500 fans who post comments such as "I think the execs of BP should be tossed into jail and BP shut down AND they should be 100 percent responsible . . . I will never buy their gas again . . . ever."

On Twitter, where "#oilspill" has been a national trending topic (heavily discussed item) all week, a facetious identity called "BPglobalPR" has attracted 78,824 followers with snarky tweets like "Can we just start calling it the oilcean and move on please? #bpcares."

Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C. consumer advocacy group, has gotten more than 14,171 signatures - including at least 221 Ohioans - on its two-week-old petition asking people to boycott BP for three months.

Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, said that even if they can't measure the immediate financial toll, "I think we've already had an impact" on BP's reputation.

"This is a company that's incredibly image-conscious," he said. "They spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this branding effort to convince people that they're 'Beyond Petroleum,' and that they care deeply about the environment and sustainability, and it was all a lie.

"People want accountability, and they want to send a clear message to BP management that their actions are inexcusable."